Alive
by Lanie M
Summary: Katou reflects under the influence of drugs.


Disclaimer: Angel Sanctuary belongs to Yuki Kaori.

Warnings: Angst, melodrama. Hints of shounen-ai? Depends on your POV. 

Contact: there_is_nothing_else@hotmail.com       

Notes: Basically, this is messy, plotless writing. When I began writing this fic, I didn't really know what I was trying to say or convey, which explains why it's turned out so vague and…aimless. But considering the length of time I've spent abstaining from writing, it's better than nothing. Ahem.

I think we'd better classify this as more of a Katou fic than a Kira/Katou fic. It seems more accurate to say that, no? *smiles*

**ALIVE**

_Good boys go to heaven, bad boys go to hell._

For reasons unknown to him, the words echoed in his ears like church bells, obsessively haunting his consciousness.  He couldn't put a finger on exactly when he had last heard the words, or where they came from.  Tonight the voice persisted in song, determined and never-ending, eerie with irresistible claustrophobia, trapping and suffocating him.

_Good boys go to heaven, and if you're good enough, maybe you'll get there too._

The non-existent little girl of his psyche continued to sing.  Katou wished he could somehow shut her up, but decided he wasn't bothered.  Like so many countless times before, buried deep within the depths of his memory, he knew it was useless striving for something which was blatantly impossible. 

If these new drugs hadn't taken such a somewhat unexpectedly stiff hold over him, he would have smirked.  It was a struggle to remember, especially in his currently short-lived, chemical-induced euphoria, when he had stopped believing that it could ever be true.  That he ever had a fair start, an equal opportunity, for a place in the Kingdom of Heaven.  

And he couldn't remember when he had stopped wanting a place there either.

So few were the things that Katou could honestly claim to be completely certain of in his life.  While the fact that Heaven wasn't the place for him was one of them, another thing he knew for sure was that whatever Hell was, it couldn't be much worse than his existence now. 

In retrospection, he hadn't learned much in his lifetime.

In an instant he could feel the chemicals working at his nerves, distorting his senses, sending him into an inexplicable trance of pantheist spirituality.  One moment he couldn't feel his legs, the next moment he could feel every vague twitch of his fingers, every pulsing of his heart, every gust of wind blowing onto his skin through the shattered shards of glass of his ancient apartment window.  He could hear his breathing, desperate stifling and weird, random chokes of laughter at nothing in particular.  He could hear horns honking hectically in the city outside, people cursing compulsively and crisp punches ringing in the air, the sounds of empty beer cans rolling down the street, infuriated screaming and cacophonic guitar chords raging at him from speakers somewhere in the distance.  Suddenly he could hear everything, anything.  Suddenly he felt everything, nothing. 

He loved the sensation of feeling nothing.  

Squinting breathlessly and groping for the red capsules he recalled were lying somewhere beside him on the floor, he searched for more of the nothingness he so yearned for.  But now coordination seemed so difficult – it seemed impossible to hold the pills in his hand and place them into his mouth.  He gave up. 

In these moments, the darkness of the night seemed to envelope him.  Once again he felt choked, alarmed, scared.  What he was afraid of he could never identify.  Then again, in these moments, that was precisely what he wanted - a world where he found nothing identifiable.  Whatever was going on around him, he didn't want to know.  He never wanted to know.

He had never wanted to know the truth about himself, the reason why his father hated him, the reason why his mother feared him.  The pity in his sister's eyes as she looked at him, the oblivion and cold apathy in his acquaintances' eyes when they called out to him.  He had never wanted to know.

And slowly, gradually, he allowed the darkness, the fear, and the emptiness to engulf him.  To overwhelm him until he no longer existed, until he was simply an obscure memory, a twisted delusion of someone's subconscious, disappearing like a white drop amongst an endless abyss of black.  It was as if Katou Yue had never existed.  As if Katou Yue was never there.

As the blonde-bearded man with the sunglasses had said to him when he had been given his first hit, _"If you can't fight it…"_

He let out loud, hearty laughs and scoffed until his stomach hurt.  His life was a joke, but yet, he couldn't seem to bring himself to find it funny.   

He stopped laughing when he heard the light tapping of footsteps vibrating through his eardrums.  And even though his vision was temporary disabled, his senses comfortingly dissipated, he knew who the footsteps belonged to. How he could identify them amongst all his unidentifiable surroundings was beyond his understanding.

All at once, Katou could feel the damp, weak wetness on his cheeks.  The realization hit him at the spur of the moment, and he realized he was crying.

A flicker of recollection arose in Katou's mind, and he was reminded of the last time he had cried – a time which seemed so far, but yet was in truth so near - under the same circumstances, under this same, silent gaze.

Katou suppressed the memory.

Instinctively his vision began to clear. His eyes met with the same familiar, black orbs, shining absently with bronze tinges of unreadable emotion.  He watched the same strands of jet black hair blend in with the raven shades of the night, moving up and down with the waves of the wind.  It was him.

Somehow, he had always known he would come.

The rage flared up inside him, unstoppable and almost mocking. He tried to scream, but the words wouldn't come.  He tried to raise his fists, but he couldn't move.  He didn't know whether these were after-effects of the drugs, but he assumed they were.  He had long grown used to forcing himself to assume they were so.  

"Leave me alone." 

He had meant to shout, but his voice came out muffled, feeble, pathetic.  Katou had always found it difficult to speak, to interact with people, but now interaction seemed so impossible to grasp. He wanted to say what he meant, convey what he felt, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't do it.  And again, he didn't know why.

Yet, before this presence, his words always made sense, his meanings always as clear as glass.  It wasn't so much because of himself, or an abruptly elevated ability to communicate. This presence could somehow see through all veils.

Omniscience, perhaps, he mused. 

 "I can't do that." came the emotionless reply.

He didn't understand.

_Why is it that every time I hide away, you can always find me?_

It was a question that Katou could never bring himself to ask.

Katou stared in silence as the figure crouched down beside him, automatically gathering his capsules of blissful antidote and placing them wordlessly into his pocket.

Katou wished he could fight, but he felt so exhausted.  He was drenched, tired of fighting, tired of denying.

Before he knew it, he could feel the tears beginning to flow once again.

"I want to die…" he listened to the sound of his shaky syllables and felt disgusted.

It was as if he couldn't recognize his voice, but had no doubt in his mind that it was his own.  The pathetic weakness of it was unmistakable.  This was who he was.  Frail and sickly, flimsy and spent.  Useless.

And the truth of it was that deep inside, he was already dead.  He was a zombie – soulless, devoid of hope or anticipation, stripped of strength to carry on, deprived of anything remotely akin to living.  The only thing keeping him in existence being the bottomless pain permeating inside him, eating at him relentlessly, breaking down whatever remained of his dignity, or his identity, for that matter.  He was losing himself.  He was no one.

And for that reason, he was undeserving of real death.  The pain had rendered his life meaningless, and death was no longer an option for him.  

For the umpteenth time, he had the urge to laugh at the irony of everything that was his life, a life of laughable failures and pointless nothingness.  This was his life.

But yet…

"I won't let you die." The same soothing serenity from the same, eternal voice.

Coming from him, the words became believable.  Katou felt strangely safe in the temptation to succumb to the belief that someone sincerely wanted him to survive.

But in all honesty, he was already tired of believing.

"Get away from me...get the fuck away from me. Get…the fuck…away…"

The presence before him didn't budge.  

It was as if there wasn't, and had never been, the slightest spark of doubt in his mind that Katou's words were nothing but utterings of anguish, and meant all but what they implied.

It was as if he already knew what Katou really wanted to say, all along, right from the very beginning.

This, too, made Katou feel strangely comforted.   

The tears continued to flow, now with increased intensity, brimming over Katou's self-control.  Katou knew there was nowhere left to hide.

Because no matter what happened, he could always find him.

No matter how much his life lay in ruins, how much he would sacrifice for release and escape, how much abuse he hurled at him and how much he tried to run away, Kira would always find him.

And he didn't know why, but it was just the way things were.

"I won't let you die."

A firm nod of the head, an almost undetectable flicker in his eyes – unchanging, ever-present, inexplicable.

"I won't leave you alone, because it's in you to live."

A light, divine touch upon Katou's skin, a tender brushing of warm fingers.

"So live."

And like a miracle, Katou felt it stirring inside him.  Arising from the dull depths of dead pain residing in his cells, tingling through the lukewarm corners of his veins. He could feel it now, bounding and spreading, overwhelming yet balsamic, a drug like never before.

He could feel it now, even if only for a few split seconds; sealed by the mystical fire in Kira's arms, sustained by the almost religious rhythm of Kira's breathing.

For a fleeting moment, Katou felt alive.

**END**


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